e would have been here before
this had not his illness prevented him. Wait till he comes."

"I can not do that, Cissy. Wait I must, but I can not wait without
offering him, through his mother, the freedom which I have so much
reason to know that he desires."

"We do not know that he desires it. We do not know that his mother even
suspects him of any fault toward you. Now that he is there--at
home--away from Bolton Street--"

"I do not care to trust to such influences as that, Cissy. If he could
not spend this morning with her in her own house, and then, as he left
her, feel that he preferred me to her, and to all the world, I would
rather be as I am than take his hand. He shall not marry me from pity,
nor yet from a sense of duty. We know the old story--how the Devil would
be a monk when he was sick. I will not accept his sick-bed allegiance,
or have to think that I owe my husband to a mother's influence over him
while he is ill."

"You will make me think, Flo, that you are less true to him than she
is."

"Perhaps it is so. Let him have what good such truth as hers can do him.
For me, I feel that it is my duty to be true to myself. I will not
condescend to indulge my heart at the cost of my pride as a woman."

"Oh, Florence, I hate that word pride."

"You would not hate it for yourself in my place."

"You need take no shame to love him."

"Have I taken shame to love him?" said Florence, rising again from her
chair. "Have I been missish or coy about my love? From the moment in
which I knew that it was a pleasure to myself to regard him as my future
husband, I have spoken of my love as being always proud of it. I have
acknowledged it as openly as you can do yours for Theodore. I
acknowledge it still, and will never deny it. Take shame that I have
loved him! No. But I should take to myself great shame should I ever be
brought so low as to ask him for his love, when once I had learned to
think that he had transferred it from myself to another woman." Then she
walked the length of the room, backward and forward, with hasty steps,
not looking at her sister-in-law, whose eyes were now filled with tears.
"Come, Cissy," she then said, "we will make an end of this. Read my
letter if you choose to read it--though indeed it is not worth
reading--and then let me send it to the post."

Mrs. Burton now opened the letter and read it very slowly. It was stern
and almost unfeeling in the calmness of the words chosen; but in t